Having been sent this photo of artist Zach Grear wearing the T-Shirt he designed to raise much-need funds for Housing Works Project that fights homelessness and AIDS In NY, prompted queerguru to check out The Aids Memorial Project too.
Their Instagram account is a forum for powerful and moving tributes to some of the remarkable man and women who had their lives brutally cut short as a result of the AIDS pandemic. It is both sobering and an oddly joyous record of both remembering and celebrating those people we have lost. Reading and sharing about those we never knew reminds us of how these unique souls are in many ways similar to our own loved ones that sadly never survived.
While the AIDS Memorial remembers those that have passed it also allows others to express their own views of why they follow the page. One recent very moving post is from Rightor Doyle
In 2005, I moved to NYC. I was 22. After struggling with my sexuality my entire life, New York gave me the freedom to finally be myself. I partied, drank and had sex, lots of it. I moved into an apartment in the West Village alone. A little nest of a flat. My 13-year-old self was creaming his acid-washed Lee jeans to know I was living my best fucking gay life.
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One day, hungover and in need of a trim (and honestly a liver transplant), I stumbled across the street to my local barber. The hairstylist, a sweet, talkative 50-year-old man began chatting my ear off. He went on endlessly about the rent going up in the neighborhood and how he couldn’t keep his place open for much longer. Engaging with him felt like too much for my deeply alcohol flooded brain. I tried to keep the conversation afloat by brattishly complaining about the ridiculous rent of my little shoebox of an apartment.
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“Oh, you live in 86 Perry?”
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I nodded while responding to a text from a friend
re: last nights drunken slutty behavior.
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“All my friends used to live there,” he went on.
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“Oh. Did they get priced out of those expensive ass apartments too?”
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“No.” He paused, “. . . they died.”
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I looked up from my phone, suddenly breathless.
“All of them?”
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“All of them.”
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After my haircut, stunned and sobered, I walked back over to my apartment. I sat on my bed. I tried to imagine all the men who lived there before me. Who came to New York to be free, to be themselves, to get drunk and have sex and love and be loved.
A generation of men I would never know.
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I follow @theaidsmemorial because I am lucky. Because the privilege of being born 15 years later than the men who lived in my apartment demands that I recognize the deep, complex, horrific, beautiful history of the those who fought and lived and died before me.
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In a world of self-obsession and social media, @theaidsmemorial is the one account that reminds me of the pain and joy of living and the privilege of being alive. I get to meet these beautiful men and women and hear their stories. Maybe one of them lived in 86 Perry St, Apartment 5. Maybe I’ll get to know him.” @rightordoyle, Actor & Writer.
If you do nothing else today, please follow The Aids Memorial Project, and buy a T-shirt too. It’s the very least we can all do. These are a few people you may recognize who have already bought one.
T-shirts $30 from https://adamsnest.com
